Ruben Flores, Backroads Pragmatists: Mexicos Melting Pot and Civil Rights in the United States (U of Pennsylvania Press, 2014)
Ruben Flores is an associate professor of American Studies at the University of Kansas. His book Backroads Pragmatists: Mexico\u2019s Melting Pot and Civil Rights in the United States (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2014) is the winner of the 2015 book award of the Society for U.S. Intellectual History. Flores recast the long U.S. civil rights movement by framing it within the exchange of ideas between Mexican and U.S. pragmatists. In a thoroughly research transnational history he demonstrates how post-revolutionary Mexican reformers adopted John Dewey\u2019s pragmatism and Franz Boas\u2019s cultural relativism in fostering assimilation of diverse native people into a pan-ethnic republic. Mexican educators Moises Saenzand Rafael Ramirez both studied under Dewey at Columbia University and were eager to apply his philosophy at home. In turn, U.S. reformers looked to Mexico\u2019s scientific state as a living laboratory and a model for assimilating native people and Hispanics of the southwest, and blacks in the south into the \u201cbeloved community.\u201d American educator George I. Sanchez, the psychologist Loyd Tireman, and the anthropologist Ralph L. Beals applied what they learned from Mexico\u2019s three-tiered rural education program, administrative structure, and the concept of the Mexican \u201cmelting pot\u201d to post-world war II school desegregation and civil rights battles in the U.S. As radical liberals, they believed in the power of government and education embodied in Mexico as effective in fostering cross-ethnic cooperation and a common vision. Flores has skillfully demonstrated how \u201cbackroads\u201d intellectuals with a mutual desire for national unity and the preservation of local difference, along with a pragmatic belief in the connection between thought and action, crossed borders and fueled civil rights gains in the U.S.\nLearn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices\nSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/law